At L&P, our Information Technology (IT) professionals often work behind the scenes, enhancing our business systems and processes and providing around-the-clock support to keep us connected.
To celebrate our IT professionals, we’ve been introducing you to some of our amazing colleagues in IT. Today, we’d like you to meet April Ryberg and Dustin Sommer!
April Ryberg, Senior Director of IT Development
April has been with us for 20 years and values the connections she has made across L&P.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
“I enjoy the relationships that I have made with my IT and business colleagues. I also enjoy improving IT and business processes and advancing our technologies.”
What inspired you to start a career in IT?
“When I was very young, I received a Timex Sinclair 1000 (a computer) that someone gave to my dad in the early 1980s. I was fascinated with writing BASIC (Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) language programs. I would use my allowance to buy Compute! magazine and would copy the programs into the computer. Initially, I had no external tape drive to save anything, so I would enter the programs again and again, testing my own changes. My passion for development started there, leading me to high school courses and ultimately degrees in computer science from Kansas State University and Pittsburg State University in Kansas.”
Dustin Sommer, Director of IT Governance, Risk, and Compliance
Dustin has been with us for 22 years and is a part of the Information Security team.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
“I enjoy working with and helping people. Generally, the IT field consists of solving problems, and we are called to provide technology solutions to meet business objectives. It is satisfying when I solve an issue or help a person with a new idea or solution. That’s the reward of being an IT professional.”
What inspired you to start a career in IT?
“Like many others, I wasn’t sure what field I wanted to pursue when I started college. I liked math and felt that IT might be a field that would hang around for many years. So, I took my first computer class, and the rest is history. I’ve been blessed to have many opportunities along this journey and still have plenty of learning to do.
I’ve also been adjunct teaching since 2018 at Missouri Southern State University to prepare future IT professionals. This field is vast with opportunities, and I enjoy seeing the next generation start their journeys in IT.”